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Cybersecurity – Always Use a Strong Password

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Overview

  • October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and this year’s theme is “See yourself in Cyber.” The idea behind this theme is to highlight how, even though cybersecurity can often be seen as a complicated subject, it all boils down to people. By practicing Cybersecurity basics, like “Use Strong Passwords”, each of us can do our part to combat the risks of cyber-attacks.

Use Strong Passwords

According to the 2021 Mid-Year WordPress Security Report by Wordfence and WPScan, the two companies blocked over 86 billion password attack attempts just in the first half of 2021. Stolen or compromised credentials are by far the most common type of data breach and take the longest time for cybersecurity experts to identify. Because of the prevalence of phishing attacks, it is paramount that we all ‘Use Strong Passwords.’

Credential Stuffing

So much of our lives take place online that the average person has around 70 to 80 passwords, Newswire.com. It is no wonder that most people tend to reuse passwords across multiple accounts.

This reusing of passwords can be a hazardous habit, though. Cyber attackers have a technique called ‘credential stuffing’ in which they take a user’s login details from a data breach on one service and use them to try and log into as many different services as possible, gaining access to the user’s accounts across multiple services.

Password Managers

The LastPass User Interface on a web browser, a cellphone, and a smartwatch.
Image Credit: lastpass.com

One of the best ways to protect yourself against these types of attacks is to use a reputable password manager like LastPass, which can generate and store strong, unique, and encrypted passwords for all your accounts.

The LastPass web browser extension giving suggestions for the netflix.com sign in page.
Image Credit: lastpass.com

Over 30 million people use LastPass to store and manage their personal and business passwords securely. These passwords are protected by AES-256-bit encryption with PBKDF2 SHA-256 and salted hashes, making them incredibly secure and dramatically reducing the risk of data breaches.

What You Can Do

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) recommends the following:

“Use Strong Passwords: Use passwords that are long, unique, and randomly generated. Use password managers to generate and remember different, complex passwords for each of your accounts. A passwords manager will encrypt passwords securing them for you!”

Stop recycling your old passwords and get yourself a password manager to securely store and generate your passwords at home and in the office.

Glossary

  • Cybersecurity — Cybersecurity is the practice of protecting critical systems and sensitive information from digital attacks. IBM
  • AES-256-bit encryption — A data/file encryption security technique that uses a 256-bit key to encrypt and decrypt data or files. It is one of the most secure encryption algorithms. PureVPN

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